Month: April 2017

Here is a fun thing to do next time you’re running around Zelda with nothing to do: try and make the big guys kill each other.

That’s what Dorkly did in this video, doing a lot of mundane dragging and leading to lure bad guys like Guardians and Talus into the same space then trying to make them go at it.

Now, a lot of the time, it doesn’t quite work. This isn’t Horizon Zero Dawn, and while some enemies will gladly square off, as you’ll see others are still more focused on killing you, regardless of the damage they’re taking from fellow foes.

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Still, when it does happen, it’s a sight to behold. That Stone Talus packs one hell of a punch.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 opened in 37 international markets last week ahead of its premiere this Friday in the United States. According to Deadline, the Marvel movie pulled in $101.2 million from international markets, which is 57 percent bigger than the original Guardians of the Galaxy.

The number stands to grow even bigger soon, as a number of international markets, including the UK, have Monday off for May Day.

“I’m returning to write and direct Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3,” he said, noting how much he loves the characters. He added that he believes “they have more adventures to go on and things to learn about themselves and the wonderful and sometimes terrifying universe we all inhabit. And, like in both Vol. 1 and Vol. 2, we will work on creating the story that goes beyond what you expect.”

The final day of DreamHack Austin was filled to the brim with explosive Melee plays, from Jason “Mew2King” Zimmerman’s incredible run through the loser’s side of the bracket to Daniel “ChuDat” Rodriguez taking down some of the game’s finest on his road to the top. Comparatively, the grand finals of Melee were a little disappointing.

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Juan “Hungrybox” Debiedma is one of Melee’s best, the reigning champ of last year’s EVO World Championship and part of Forbes’ 30 Under 30 in Games, Class of 2017. So when faced against ChuDat’s Ice Climbers in the grand finals on match point, knowing the kill power the dual climbers had, Hungrybox made the smart play and ran the clock.

In Super Smash Bros. Melee, players win by knocking their opponents off the edge of the screen and taking away all four of their lives (called “stock”). If both players still have stock when the timer hits zero, the player with more stock wins; otherwise, the game goes into sudden death.

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While the Ice Climbers have a lot of kill power with their grab attacks and hammer swings, Jigglypuff has significant mobility advantage in the air, able to float around just out of reach. Hungrybox realized fairly early on in game five that it would be safer to dance around ChuDat than engage, and so he played the mobility game. Once it became clear what was going on, ChuDat even sacrificed a stock to respawn with both Ice Climbers (though the character is a duo of Climbers, the blue one is the “main” Climber, while the pink one can be eliminated but not count as losing a stock).

Despite having both Climbers in, ChuDat couldn’t close the distance to secure the win and reset the bracket, and so Hungrybox emerged the victor of DreamHack Austin. Even after winning, you can see him acknowledge that while it was the smart play, it wasn’t the most entertaining to watch.

Reactions in Twitch chat during the event were, naturally, vitriolic, but social media was a mixture of acceptance and disappointment. It’s like watching your favorite football team run down the clock in a championship game: you’re happy they won, but it’s hard to be excited about the way it happened.

The opening couch gag for Sunday night’s episode of The Simpsons was a parody of the The Big Bang Theory. If you missed it or want to watch again, the video is now on YouTube. It’s special in that it celebrates the 30th anniversary of the show’s debut as a short that premiered on April 19, 1987 as part of the Tracey Ullman Show (via EW).

The gag riffs on the Barenaked Ladies song from The Big BangTheory,as memorable scenes from across the animated show’s 30-year run play. Mr. Plow, Bart (trying to) sell his soul, “alcohol and night swimming” are all represented, among other memorable moments. The new, Simpsons-styled lyrics are also a nice touch.

WWE’s Payback gives stars a chance at a little revenge after what happened at Wrestlemania. The Raw brand-exclusive event comes to PPV and the WWE Network today, and all but one of Raw‘s titles are on the line.

Payback takes place at the SAP Center in San Jose, California. There are eight matches on the card, one of which will take place on the Kickoff Show.

A Russian man might be spending years in prison after his trial wrapped up last week, after being arrested in 2016 for making a video about Pokémon Go while inside a church, a violation of the country’s laws against “inciting religious hatred”.

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Last year, Ruslan Sokolovsky made a video inside the famous Church of All Saints in Yekaterinburg, in which the atheist made some jokes about not being able to catch Jesus. He begins the video questioning the country’s laws against mocking the Orthodox Church, even inserting a clip spelling out the fines and possible prison sentences for those caught breaking them.

Shortly after posting this video to YouTube, Sokolovsky was arrested and as the Washington Post reports, has been in detention ever since. His trial ended on Friday, and at its conclusion prosecutors asked that he receive the maximum sentence for his crimes: 3.5 years in prison.

“I may be an idiot, but I am by no means an extremist,” Sokolovsky says in a written statement posted by Russian news site Meduza. “A long time ago, people were imprisoned in camps and for longer terms – not for 3.5 years, but for decades – because they [foully] joked, for example, about communism and about Stalin. Now it turns out that they want to imprison me for 3.5 years [in real terms] because [I] obscenely joked about Orthodoxy and about Patriarch Kirill. For me, this is savagery and barbarism. I do not understand how this is at all possible. Nevertheless, as we have seen, it is quite possible indeed.”

Sokolovsky was arrested for violating the same law—criticised strongly by groups like Amnesty—that saw members of the punk group Pussy Riot imprisoned in 2012.

OG might have been favorites heading into Valve’s Dota 2 Major hosted in Kiev, but they certainly didn’t look it by game five of the grand finals. Arguably the more talented team, and certainly the more experienced, it wasn’t until a fateful team fight in the 39th minute of the final match that the European squad re-discovered their inner champions.

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They and Virtus Pro traded matches up until the very end, with the Russians looking the stronger side despite OG taking first blood. The latter’s Anathan “ana” Pham seemed to be able to clutch advantages out of thin air, as if the sheer will of the position two mid’s desire to be awesome was enough to make up for VP’s superior play calling and composure. By game five, however, the momentum appeared to be firmly in the latter’s corner.

Dota 2 matches take a long time these days. Even series seem to rarely go two and out, making for long wars of attrition where even when all seems lost victory remains a possibility. That’s how OG found themselves nearly two thirds of an hour into the final game of the grand finals trailing their opponents 5-22 in kills. In any regular pub match at home, that would be your cue to get up and go grab some refreshment while waiting to queue for the next game, but at Kiev, and for OG, it presented itself as the perfect opportunity to strike and knock an unsuspecting VG off balance.

OG found themselves stalking Roman “RAMZES666" Kushnarev’s Alchemist in the jungle near the Radiant ancient camp when Johan “N0tail” Sundstein’s Timbersaw decided to pounce and initiate an uphill team fight. It proved all that was needed to open the flood gates and unleash a torrent of chaos. VP’s heavy-hitter, Outworld Devourer, was kept out of the fight early on thanks to a well timed Eul’s Scepter that spun him up into the air and kept his owner, Vladimir “No[o]ne” Minenko, out of the early fight.

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With everyone crunched up together, OG was able to unleash damage by way of Timbersaw and Troll Warlord, two heroes who do well in a brawl but are less effective when things are kept at a distance. At one point, three of VP’s players were all but stacked on top of one another, providing appealing targets for OG and the team’s bashes, short stuns that come at random intervals when a special item is wielded, which kept the Russians from being able to retaliate as they had all throughout the game up to that point.

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OG managed to wipe all but one in about twenty seconds, forcing VP’s RAMZES666 to buy back and unload some of his teams previous advantage in order to defend against the coming onslaught. Those four kills, including all of VP’s principals, provided OG precisely the momentum they needed to claw their way back into the game after being decimated in its earlier stags thanks to the Russian’s usually superior positioning and timing. Fight after fight, OG seemed to scrape its way ahead, until in the waning moments of the match VP stood in their base outgunned and unable to cope. Their previous game plan had failed, its script of how things would unfold supplanted by another one, and they lacked the ingenuity to turn things back around.

Leads like VP had earlier in the game, double-digit kills and thousands in gold more then their opponents, used to entail crushing curtaining, and in most cases they still do, but increasingly Dota 2 has show a penchant for late game surprises thanks to a number of factors including recent patches and the growing experience and talent of the competitors. And while OG didn’t look as good as VP for most of the series, the fact that they had to play from behind to ultimately win the long, drawn out tournament makes their achievement feel that much more earned. The diverse team of young and old didn’t play crappy and then get lucky, they played crappier than their opponents and then made up for it in the span of ten minutes when push came to shove.

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“We said we can still win this, we can still win this,” OG’s captain, Tal “Fly” Aizik, said his team were once again crowned champions. “At the end we know these guys are buying without buybacks and they just started panicking towards the end, and we knew we’re going to take it our way and we’re gonna win it. When they died without buybacks we started going crazy.”

This marks the fourth Dota 2 Major OG has one. But having never claimed the game’s biggest competitive prize, Fly and his team will be looking to march into The International 7 later this year and cement their legacy as one of the all time greats.

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Hey everyone, I'm Jonathan but people will know me as Jon... I enjoy hiking and exploring the outside world as well as getting to see fantastic views. It can bring you to the most beautiful places on earth and into contact with amazing plants and wildlife and can be done all year round which is why I enjoy it so much despite it being challenging sometimes due to the weather - it has allowed me to meet a lot of new people and experience things I wouldn't have before. I also find it relaxing and interesting.
I also really enjoy blogging and sharing my experiences with similar people. Hopefully you will read mine.
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